Actions not harming others is not so black and white.
Who pays the costs when children don't receive as good upbringings as they should because of divorce or drug abuse? Who pays the costs when drug addicts drop out of jobs and society because they are in a state of total apathy? Who pays the costs when society is dragged down to the lowest common denominator by vulgarity and brazenness?
Merely because homes don't get burned down or people don't get killed or their property stolen, or because the problems don't have a hard-and-fast financial cost, doesn't mean we aren't all damaged by them - that our country is not so good a place to live. The damage done to our level of social development, our culture, is manifest.
And so you have what we do today, with a low level of political and philosophical discourse, a downward spiral in people's level of intelligence and education, and an increasingly foolish and apathetic populace like something out of Fahrenheit 451.
And yes, that is a definitely, distinguishably worse, undesirable, and avoidable outcome. And yes, society does have a right to take measures to prevent it. Even if that means putting limits on freedom. Because total freedom is no freedom at all. There is such a thing as sacrificing a certain degree of freedom to become more free.
I'll give an excellent example. There is a state-mandated monopoly on letter delivery. Courier and parcel services excepted, of course - this means you cannot underbid the USPS and offer to deliver mail for 25 cents a letter. Why? Because it would be dangerous to society. Because companies would inevitably try to economize by limiting service to outlying regions, or by ducking liability when something doesn't go as it should. The fact it might be cheaper for individual consumers, or they might do it more efficiently in some respects, doesn't outweigh the costs to stability...nor the cost to freedom by prohibiting it.
The best way to ensure freedom is to centralize authority. Loss of freedom is less often the result of putting absolute power in the hands of one man or institution than by a lack of clear authority: diffiusion of power into a clique of elite organizations, or an impermeable status quo, without a great equalizer to ensure fairness for all - the state.
rathmoon wrote:
You have every right to desire to bring stability to other's lives and offer assistance, what you do not have is the right to force your views of what stability is upon them if their actions are not harming you. Suggesting society to control people through government force (er institutionally) simply because you think your method is better... is anti-liberty. We accepted a statue of liberty to remind us of what liberty is; nowadays maybe we should change it every election to a statue of whoever is President since they know so much better than us and the Constitution and so many people buying into an anti-liberty philosophy.
The problem with this is, that's not life. People are shaped by their experiences. True freedom, in the sense you describe it, does not exist. Freedom is best upheld by creating a world where everyone can grow to their full potential. And that sometimes means taking inimical measures.
